Occasionally I come across sentences (and more) translated into English from some other tongue and cannot imagine what was being said. I'm sure other AHers have had similar experiences. I thought it might be useful to start a thread where we can post these incomprehensibles and see if we can help each other figure out what they mean.

Here's one to start. I was at an Indonesian Dance and Music Festival the other night, and was handed a brochure which declared (among other things) of the Rantak Dance...

"The resistance maintained in Minganese martial art is illustrated by the way in making the pole or a stuff to palpite the rice broken into three if it hampers the will."

Occasionally I come across sentences (and more) translated into English from some other tongue and cannot imagine what was being said. I'm sure other AHers have had similar experiences. I thought it might be useful to start a thread where we can post these incomprehensibles and see if we can help each other figure out what they mean.

Here's one to start. I was at an Indonesian Dance and Music Festival the other night, and was handed a brochure which declared (among other things) of the Rantak Dance...

"The resistance maintained in Minganese martial art is illustrated by the way in making the pole or a stuff to palpite the rice broken into three if it hampers the will."

I'll give this a swing. I know a lady who belly dances She has told me that a lot of the dances she does are closer to a form of martial arts than dance. I think this is one of the ones she was telling me about.

Rantak is like the Hula of Hawaii in that it tells a story with moves. Now it is also more like Tie Chi in that it's also a martial arts form just slowed down till it looks beautiful.

Okay, best guess at the wording they used here.

"The resistance maintained (power) in Minganese martial art is illustrated(shown)by the way in making (breaking) the pole or a stuff to palpite (thresh) the rice (A big stick)broken into three if it hampers the will." ( breaking it into three if it gets in your way)

"The power of Minganese martial arts is shown by breaking a stick used to thresh rice into three pieces if it gets in your way."

Like I said that's best guess.

Okay how about this one I heard a few years ago.

"I gots me tree gulls" he was not talking about birds. Except in England.

I'll give this a swing. I know a lady who belly dances She has told me that a lot of the dances she does are closer to a form of martial arts than dance. I think this is one of the ones she was telling me about.

Rantak is like the Hula of Hawaii in that it tells a story with moves. Now it is also more like Tie Chi in that it's also a martial arts form just slowed down till it looks beautiful.

Okay, best guess at the wording they used here.

"The resistance maintained (power) in Minganese martial art is illustrated(shown)by the way in making (breaking) the pole or a stuff to palpite (thresh) the rice (A big stick)broken into three if it hampers the will." ( breaking it into three if it gets in your way)

"The power of Minganese martial arts is shown by breaking a stick used to thresh rice into three pieces if it gets in your way."

Like I said that's best guess.

Okay how about this one I heard a few years ago.

"I gots me tree gulls" he was not talking about birds. Except in England.

M.S.Tarot

Thanks, M.S.Tarot; that makes sense of it. And the "stuff' now is obviously a typo for "staff."

That is the kind of linguistic problem I was thinking of in starting this thread. That is, the statements that we expect made sense in the original language, but have been incomprehensibly mis-translated. Such translations are usually a result of 'translating by dictionary' rather than by meaning.
Some are easy to figure out: I once saw a help wanted ad here in Quebec that declared "The harbour of security boots are mandated." It meant, of course, that workers were required to wear safety shoes. "Surete" means both security and safety, and "harbor...?" "On a port..." = "One wears...,, but if you look in the dictionary, "port" means "harbour."

There's always a problem in translating from one language to another, if the person doing the translation doesn't understand what the orginal language text means. A classic example is a supposed translation of a technical article that used the phrase 'water goat' several times. The translation was then shown to an engineer who crossed out 'water goat' and wrote in 'hydraulic ram.'

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An Italian maker of domestic machines had a paragraph referring to "much cleaning of "not much deep pots."

During the Olympic Games in China, there were published on the 'net a load of pictures of the multi-language signs installed.
THe ones for the toilets were a hoot.
If I ever find them on my PC I'll post a couple.